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I Haven’t Been Paying Nearly Enough

ATTENTION TO THIS BLOG lately. Frex, I haven’t even LOOKED at the Google Analytics numbers in I don’t know how long. No idea how many readers I have, if any. So. Lettuce resolve to do better. Starting tomorrow. (Yes, I am President of the Procrastinator’s club. Or I would be, if I hadn’t put off running for so long.) So, I think I want to do some of that stuff. Like… Axe y’all (assuming there’s a “all” a y’all for me t’ axe. Like t’ axe y’all if you’d like it if I snippeted.

What’s a snippet? y’axe back. Well… it’s an excerpt of a work of fiction in progress. Usually done (as is my case) by an author desperate for attention.

I’mm thinking about snippeting the current WiP — Discovery is the working title. No more’n six er eight chapters out of a projected 25.

Whattaya think? Would y’all read and comment in the spirit of the thing?

And, wow! We have actual readers! What say, Jaime? Start with Ch1 of Discovery?

And the resta y’all. What pattern should I follow in parceling them out? Rationing, so they last a bit longer, y’see? MWF – Every saturday? Right now, I have 30,000 words complete, which is about 1/3-1/4 of the complete novel, and by the advice of other writers, all I ought to snippet before publication. Approximately 500 words at a time is a long blog post.

Greedy bastage that I am, I say go for up to 1k at a time ( Sat works…gives one something to look forward to on the weekend.) Three times a week, might be a bit too much…you would end up spending more time on the posting and (hopefully) having to spend time on three different groups of responses, which might get rather cluttered, assuming your response rate gets up there. I would opt to keep it as simple and uncluttered as possible…one day a week with it being a somewhat lager snippet. (You can always “expose” just the first 100-200 words, with the remainder being placed “under the fold”, to keep the individual posts looking tighter.

Good points, Guy. Will probably follow something like the pattern you suggest. Need to spend some time developing companion illustrations and character sketches. Hard to work in my current circumstances, though I recall in Jr. High, drawing all kinda nekkid ladies on those skinny little student chair-arm desks. Ought to be able to work on a 30×36 clip desk.

I’m not a critic, and I don’t generally fawn over things either, so I may not comment. That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate seeing what other folks are doing.

Yeah. I’m messing with some writing myself. I’m doing it because I want to, not out of the hope of actually, like selling it or anything, but I know some of what goes on when you do that kind of thing, and am trying to learn more. Observation of others does help, but practice is probably my biggest need.

Note that my main purpose in posting this is to let you know that there are actually some people out here who are reading your postings. You do have an audience.

Thanks. I am coming to the conclusion that perhaps my greatest contribution to the scribbler’s trade may turn out to be the advice to persevere. A friend has quit after his first novel tanked. I have watched a good many creative careers from start to finish — failure or stardom — and learned this: a winner is somebody who doesn’t quit. There really is nothing more to it. You have to suffer the blows and get the fuck back up and keep going. It’s like the fight against evil: You’ll NEVER win if you give up. And the other side of the coin is that losers are the people who quit before they win. Maybe the second before success comes, maybe at the front end of decades of seemingly fruitless efforts. It should be obvious, but, along with Heinlein’s You can’t win if you don’t play, You WILL NOT win if you don’t persevere. As Kris Rusch has advised. the best thing you can do to promote your current work — particularly if you are an unknown working your first novel — is to write the next one and get it out there. That’s what I’m doing here.

I’m late to the party, as usual, but I just wanted to add that you have another reader who agrees that slightly longer snippets once a week are probably the way to go. I just have too many things to read online and not enough time to read them all and read the books in Mount TBR, too.